1 school resource officer, which cannot be vacant for more than two weeks per the contract with the school district

1 special victims unit

2 narcotics detectives

1 Internet Crimes Against Children detective

1 detective supervisor

2 patrol

1 patrol officer who recently suffered a broken finger from a suspect

2 new officers at currently at the academy but won’t be available on the street until April

1 community service officer-accident investigator

2 dispatchers (potentially more in the near future)

1 property technician

Bowen is temporarily dissolving the Business Residential Involving Community, or BRIC, position and assigning an officer to the SRO vacancy being created by Cory Reeves moving to the Cascade County Sheriff’s Office with Jesse Slaughter.City, college work to fill need for paramedics

To fill some of the void of the BRIC position, currently held by Officer Adam Hunt, Bowen said he will have patrol officers patrolling the DDACTS area, which is largely the downtown core, when they have some free time.

“It’s not ideal, but it’s what we kind of have to do right now,” Bowen said.

Bowen said he’s also working to hire a temporary civilian service officer, or traffic accident investigator, for the next 10 months while the current employee is on a military deployment.

The accident investigators lighten some of the patrol bureau’s load, Bowen said, so that patrol officers don’t spend as much of their time responding to vehicle crashes and instead can focus on other issues and preventative work if they get time during their shifts.

Two people are currently at the law enforcement academy and graduate Friday, but they then have roughly six months of localized training before they’re available to patrol the streets on their own, Bowen said.

He’s not planning to fill the other detective positions until those new officers have completed their training phase since that could create movement within the department and Bowen said he needs officers on the streets.

A few years ago, Bowen requested an additional ICAC officer, which Commissioners approved in the budget. But that position is currently vacant since one detective took a position with the state.

Bowen said he feels bad having requested that position and not being able to fill it currently, but that he can’t backfill it with the officers he needs on the street.

The department is also preparing to make a major change in their shifts, moving to a 10 hour, 40 minute shift starting on a trial basis in January.

GFPD officials crunched their data and found that their current shift structure didn’t match up well with the call volumes that were occurring at certain times of the day.

Officials at GFPD met with the police union since the change was outside their collective bargaining agreement and the union also helped develop the new shift structure, Bowen said.

“I have no idea how this is gonna work,” he said, but they’re going to try it and monitor results closely. If it doesn’t work, Bowen said they’ll likely go back to an 8-hour shift cycle that will allow more flexibility in callbacks if needed.

Bowen said he is concerned about dispatch and if the new shift structure overloads the city dispatcher at certain times. Typically, the county dispatcher picks up the overflow during surges, but since the county is paying a significant chunk of change for their dispatch position, Bowen said it wouldn’t be right to use a county resource to handle a city problem.

Bowen said he’ll be monitoring that situation and if it becomes too much, will look at adding another city dispatch position.

“Something has to give,” Bowen told commissioners.

Bowen has requested additional officer positions and other resources each budget year for at least the last five years, few of which have been funded.

Bowen also told commissioners that he’s expecting a report on the state of the city’s radio communication infrastructure within the next 10 days and anticipates that decisions will need to be made to replace the equipment within the next 18 months to two years, which will likely cost more than $1 million.